4 ms·
Upon reading "Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman !" and "What do you care what other people think ?", I have become somewhat of a fan of Mr. Richard Feynman.
by aneutron 6y ago
Upon reading "Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman !" and "What do you care what other people think ?", I have become somewhat of a fan of Mr. Richard Feynman. (Despite it being against his idea about idolizing people).
But throughout the two books, his relationship with his sister, Joan Feynman, was an extremely intriguing once. They were both brilliant, and they both encouraged each other.
I got the impression that he, being the person to refuse authority and conforming with the pre-established, always came back to his sister for an opinion on how to handle "mere humans". And it showed in the second part of his story about the Challenger investigation.
May she rest in piece.
- xutopia 6y agoRest in *peace.
- throwaw4y-plate 6y agoI don't think it would be very comfortable to rest in a null pointer.
- aneutron 6y agoUnfortunately, very embarrassing mistake that's there forever now.
- mmhsieh 6y agono need for embarrassment for you. radical idea here: the point of language is for a person to put the ideas from his head into the head of another person. so long as the idea is conveyed, it is successful. piece/peace distinction in spelling only matters when there is a real risk of ambiguity in intended meaning. everyone new what you meant -- so it was OK!
- reaperducer 6y agoNot radical at all. It goes back at least to the early 1900's. Big newspaper owners like Colonel McCormick wanted to convey meaning by using fewer letters, thus saving on ink and paper costs. They invented alternate spellings to suit their purposes. Most died out, but a few have stuck with us, like using "thru" for "through."
- mmhsieh 6y agoi am not sure if this is true but george lucas supposedly named episode VI return of the jedi instead of revenge of the jedi to save on ink costs. i am almost completely sure it is not true but i have not yet seen a debunking of this otherwise wacky idea that is plausible, given we are talking about george lucas here.
- larrywright 6y agoI always heard the reason for that as “Jedis would never seek revenge”, or something along those lines. Bottom line was that being a Jedi was incompatible with the idea of revenge.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rytill 6y ago> everyone *knew what you meant Couldn't help myself.
- itisit 6y agoWoosh
- aborsy 6y agoI wouldn’t take those stories seriously. He spent a lot of time generating stories and anecdotes about himself. Today a PhD student would come up with something like path integrals and would barely be granted a PhD. Real science and showmanship are different things.
- mhh__ 6y agoA PhD wouldn't be granted for reformulating quantum mechanics? Keep in mind, the Schrödinger equation was published less than 20 years prior to Feynman's PhD.
- aborsy 6y agoIt was considered “reformulation” back then. By today’s standards, it’s a conference paper and publishable if you combine it with politics. The diagrams would certainly be criticized today that they are graphical illustration of known expressions, not new and certainly not rigorous. Also, path integrals were taken right out of Dirac’s so called little paper and Norbert wiener’s papers. Dirac thought they are straightforward but not rigorous and was busy with other stuff anyways. Again today if you propose something like that, it would be rejected on the ground that it’s not rigorous.
- mhh__ 6y agoFeynman diagrams were criticised at the time. Dyson showed they were equivalent to Schwinger's methods, then people gradually realized they were physical as well as helpful.
- jules 6y agoPerhaps, but that's not an indictment of Feynman, but an indictment of how you get a PhD nowadays. Today you get a PhD for something rigorous and technical and ultimately irrelevant compared to Feynman diagrams and path integrals.
- aneutron 6y agoIn life, you sometimes learn that what is mathematical or cutting edge is not always synonymous with useful or revolutionary. "Hackers" of 1990s were just script kiddies by today's standards, because the "bar was low". That doesn't make them any less important as far as contributions go. All in all, maybe you are right, and maybe he is somewhat of a showman. But perhaps that is what we need more. Someone who masters science but also is human.
- fiftyacorn 6y agoI always remember Richard having a science lab as a child and would pay his younger sister to take electric shocks